Consumers have an ever-increasing array of options for consuming media content, in terms of the types of media content (e.g., video, audio, text, etc.), providers of the media content, and devices for consuming the media content. Media content providers are becoming increasingly sophisticated and effective at providing media content quickly and reliably to consumers.
Media content (e.g., movies, television shows, videos, music, and electronic books) is often streamed over networks using adaptive bitrate streaming for playback on a viewer's device. Adaptive bitrate streaming determines the viewer device's bandwidth in real time and adjusts the quality of the media content that is requested and played back on the viewer's device to account for changes in the bandwidth. Fragments of the media content are requested individually and stored in a buffer for playback. Unfortunately, if the bandwidth significantly degrades, the streaming of the media content using the fragments can begin to drain the buffer faster than it can be filled, resulting in the playback being interrupted for rebuffering.